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Monday, September 10, 2012

Say Hello to My Little Friend! A Back Up Flash Drive

This is my new buddy. His name is Lucky. The package says : "Lucky brings good
fortune. It's as simple as that, don't
over think it." How could I resist?

He is of course a flash drive to
back up my writing. I pop him in, spend
75 seconds updating him, and throw him in my purse like Tom Thumb.

I am usually tight
with my $10 writing budget, but I splurged the $14.99 because he was so freaking
adorable. He is also soft enough to rub
when my brain is busy working out an idea.

You can get a 2-4GB flash drive
for cheap. The $3.99 one was about the
size of a dime, but I was worried certain I would lose it. Lucky can hold 8GB! which is clearly
unnecessary since 6 months of writing = 150 mbs.

We do use a separate external
hard drive to back up all our files at home, but the process isn't
perfect. We
only do the backup monthly and generally forget to put it in the fire proof
safe. So it only secures us in the event of a hard drive meltdown or theft.

This
guy is just for writing and is my sole responsible to keep updated. I would be devastated to lose a
month of work. Those nine new
ideas. That breakthrough on editing a
story. Submission history! ("Excuse
me Madam Editor, I may or may not have
sent this to you...")

The other option is to use online
storage with a scheduled backup routine.
But I'm not ready
yet to trust cyberspace. Lucky seems so
much more reliable. It's probably the
spiky hair.

The main problem so far is Lucky
looking like a toy which has drawn the interest of my kids. I do not look forward to digging through
piles of Little People or *gasp* the sandbox to find him. I may have to suggest he is poisonous.

So, what is your back up
strategy? If your answer is
"none," please run to Staples or CVS and plop down your $5 for a flash drive. Your work is too
precious to lose.

6 comments:

"Excuse me Madam Editor, I may or may not have sent this to you..." LOL That would be me, my memory is not that sharp anymore. Thanks for this reminder, I just asked my husband how everything is saved. We use a cloud back up service that saves in real time and can be accessed remotely. But Lucky is super cute :)